1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data communication system, and particularly to a data communication protocol and corresponding computing network.
2. Background of the Relevant Art
Communication over the world wide web ("web") is limiting in a number of ways. The hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) is an internet protocol which is employed to convey information between a web browser and web server. The HTTP is simplistic in that it is a stateless protocol wherein data is transferred between client and server as a one time event. A non-permanent connection is established in which data is transferred between a server and a browser at the client computer in the form of a request for information by the client or a response thereto provided by the server. Data is provided to a client in response to a client request only in the form of a page of information. Due to this inflexible data communication protocol, data transfer on the web is ill-suited for transactional sequences.
In response, various work-arounds have been developed, such as browser cookies, hidden values and complex common gateway interfaces. However, such work-arounds are quick fixes which do not address a better solution to communicate data across the internet or other computing network.